Marg-e Yazdgerd is a metaphor for the relative and partial nature of truth, identity, and memory against the background of the transitional period of the Iranian revolution. Similar to Pirandello’s Right You Are, Beyzaie’s play is also concerned with the problems of verification where multiple conflicting versions of a situation are given and the antagonists along with the audience have to decide which may be true. The original idea for the events Beyzaie exploits in Marg-e Yazdgerd, however, can be traced back to his early school years. Back then, with respect to the historical reality of King Yazdgerd’s death, Beyzaie asked his teacher, “Who tells us then that Yazdgerd was murdered while asleep at the hands of the miller, who wanted to rob him of his jewelry and elaborate clothes?”100—a thought-provoking question to which the teacher was not able to give any
answers and thereby encouraged his curious pupil not to pursue the matter any further. Beyzaie, of course, was no quitter and indeed Marg-e Yazdgerd is the playwright’s attempt to reflect on this one-simple-sounding question in order to give voice to multiple, but equally valid, alternative perspectives.
Marg-e Yazdgerd concerns a 651 A.D. murder of the last Sassanian king, Yazdgerd III, who, upon the fall of his capital, Ctesiphon, escaped eastward in an attempt to raise an army against the Muslim Arabs who had invaded Iran and as the play opens are close to conquer the Sassanian empire outright. The details of the assassination are constructed and reconstructed from different, contradictory perspectives that challenge the possibility of accessing objective truth. Significantly, Marg-e Yazdgerd, as well as the film version which was made three years later directed by Beyzaie himself, opens with this historical “fact” that “… Thereupon Yazdgerd fled towards Marv and sought refuge in a watermill. The
miller, longing for His treasures, killed Him in sleep… [651 A.D.]. History!”101 The single
setting of the play is a mill in the vicinity of the city of Marv, where the Commander, the Captain, and the Soldier, accompanied by the Mobad (Zoroastrian high priest), have just arrived to avenge the death of the King. The Miller, the Woman, and the Girl are all convicted of murder and should seize the fleeting opportunity to exculpate themselves from the charge by revealing the truth about what really happened to the King while Yazdgerd’s army men are setting up a gallows to hang the murderer on.
Each of the three defendants provides a long narrative and offers his/her version of truth, yet all the competing accounts are coherent and equally plausible. According to the Miller, the King, who was well aware of the impending defeat, wanted to commit suicide but since he was too afraid to take his own life, he had offered to pay the Miller to carry out the plan. Faced with the latter’s resistance, the King then violates his wife and daughter in order to entice the Miller to kill him. The Miller provides further reasons throughout the play: the tragedy of his young son’s death who served as a soldier in the war as well as the King’s systematic repression and exploitations which cost the Miller his youth. According to the Woman, on the other hand, the corpse does not belong to the King; rather, he has faked his own death, using someone else’s corpse as a body. Finally, the Girl initially claims that the King is not dead but asleep. Later, however, she reveals that her mother and the King had collaborated in her father’s killing; the corpse therefore, she believes, belongs to the Miller. Given the conflicting set of narratives, the leaders as well as the audience are left to puzzle over the events. Indeed, a faithful reconstruction of reality remains elusive. To complicate the situation even further, none of Yazdgerd’s men nor the priest have seen the King’s face before and thus are unable to verify the identity of the corpse. By the end
101 Bahram Beyzaie, Death of Yazdgerd, trans. Manuchehr Anvar (Tehran: Roshangaran & Women Studies Publishing, 1997): 5.
of the play, the leaders accept the Girl’s version of truth and hang the corpse as the murderer of the King from the gallows. The characters’ relief is short-lived, however, as the completion of the Arab conquest seems both imminent and inevitable.
The opposition between fact and perception are evident from the very beginning. Paralleling the fall of Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Pahlavi king, in 1979, the play takes place during “a timeless time, at zero moment, when one historical period has ended and another has not commenced yet. A period of absolute chaos in the midst of which few people try to maintain some order while others attempt to stay alive under the absolute reign of death.”102 What served as a catalyst for this chaos, according to history, was the
murder of Yazdgerd by a miller, who succumbed to the temptations of jewelry and money. Marg-e Yazdgerd, on the other hand, draws on this historical “truth” only to dramatize the notion that there is no fixed reality, that reality itself is a subjective construction which may vary with individuals. The accumulation of multiple testimonies in relation to a single crime mystery perfectly epitomizes the characters’ interpretive differences and embodies their individual interests. Furthermore, Beyzaie’s poetic imagining of events existing outside the dominant history ultimately reflects the constructed nature of history itself. History is thus fiction and Marg-e Yazdgerd is an attempt to unmask the historical myths that constitute the “reality.”
One of the elements that accentuate this sense of uncertainty associated with reality and the fragmented nature of history is the setting of the play. The seventh-century cosmopolitan city of Marv once boasted of much splendor and used to be one of the major cultural centers of the Sassanian Empire, but now, it has become an emblem for desolation, decay, and decline: the entire city is deserted, reduced to ruins, and turned into a disposal
site for unclaimed corpses. In this dimly lit mill lays a body whose face is covered with a golden mask. In choosing this site as the background for the recollection of contradictory trial testimonies, Beyzaie successfully tries to bridge the gap between the realms of history and narrative and in doing so, relegates the issue of historical veracity to the realm of opinion and human subjectivity. The “dilapidated millstone” which is a “ritual symbol for time standing still in a dangling moment of history and for the wheel of fortune,”103 further
challenges strict binary between history, deemed as grand objective fact versus narrative, viewed as trivial and fictional. Additionally, similar to the veil worn by Signora Ponza in Pirandello’s play, here, too, the masked corpse is meant to serve a two-fold purpose. On a more conventional level, it hides the face of the wearer and prevents the characters from knowing his identity. The corpse, therefore, becomes whoever others see him to be— existing only in relation. On the other hand, the mask, as a site for imposed multiple identities, is an embodiment of the indiscernibility of objective truth. There is not one truth about who the murdered person is, but as many truths as different perspectives.
Additionally, aside from Beyzaie’s perennial preoccupation with epistemological skepticism, ontological dilemmas, and artistic concerns, in Marg-e Yazdgerd, the playwright also seeks to comment on the shifting social and political issues of his country through evoking events from the past. Written during the pivotal period of the 1979 Revolution, the play allegorizes “the time of the transitional year after the overthrow of an ailing monarchy and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”104 The seventh-
century backdrop of Marg-e Yazdgerd combined with the play’s Old Persian language
103 Saeed Talajooy, “History and Iranian Drama: The Case of Bahram Beyzaie,” in Perceptions of Iran:
History, Myths and Nationalism from Medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic (New York: I.B.Tauris &
Co. Ltd, 2014): 197.
104 Shouleh Vatanabadi, “Paradoxical Interplays: Censorial and Counter-Censorial Discourses,” in Critical
Encounters: Essays on Persian Literature and Culture in Honor of Peter J. Chelkowski, ed. M. R.
successfully situates the story, both geographically and linguistically, in the past and thereby allows Beyzaie to sidestep censorship regulations despite staging his contemporary issues. Furthermore, by sustaining continuity between memories of the past and present uncertainties in his society, the dramatist enables the audience to move across time periods as if little has changed.
Another trope that immediately captures the ruptures that characterizes Beyzaie’s work is the play’s decidedly ironic title, Marg-e Yazdgerd (Majles-e Shahkoshi). Divided into two parts, the first half translated as Death of Yazdgerd emphasizes historical actuality, completeness, and certainty while the parenthetical subtitle, (Gathering for Regicide), suggests fictionality, performativity, and theatricality. Shahkoshi is a ritual that originates from ancient Iran and involves the act of killing of an old and ailing king or his surrogate and using his blood to fertilize the land.105 Beyzaie’s emphasis on the theatricality of the
play—further supported by numerous maskings and role-playing—is crucial since he uses the medium of theater to produce disillusionment about the objective value of history. History, therefore, is a theatrical production that manufactures the past and thereby much like memory is elusive. Interestingly, the ritual of killing of a presumably divine king is also practiced in other parts of the world. Perhaps, alluding to the Achamenian ceremonies, James Frazer points out:
Now primitive peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. […] The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of nature is dependent on the man-god’s life, what catastrophes may not be
expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his
soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay.106
The difference, however, is that in Marg-e Yazdgerd the images of the King and the Miller are blended so seamlessly together that by the end of the play they become indistinguishable from one another. Furthermore, regardless of the identity of the corpse, the unintended “offering” hardly promises the possibility of purification and protection at a critical moment when the Iranian empire has nearly collapsed and the Arab invaders are close at hand.
The ritual of Shahkoshi gradually altered over the course of the time and in the post- Islamic period evolved into a carnivalesque ceremony called, Mir-e Nowruzi (the king of the New Year). In this ritual, a commoner is chosen as a substitute for the king to rule over the country for five days during the New Year’s holidays. In his short reign, the farcical king assumes royal authority and can issue orders of many kinds. The juxtaposition of this ritual and the tradition of naqqali (epic storytelling), Talajooy asserts:
aesthetically undermines epic grandeur just as the thematic structure rearranges the events and the dialogue to reveal the underbelly of the idea of heroism and empire. It gradually injects the carnivalesque into the sublime to demonstrate the absurdity of glorifying unbridled imperial power and the heroic gestures
associated with it.107
Significantly, this dual narrative strategy is accompanied by a dual narrative structure which successfully opens up the conventional historical discourse to marginal voices. According to the historical narrative, produced and promoted by first set of characters, including the King, his men, and the priest, Yazdgerd III was an ideal ruler of his country; he was just, noble, and valorous in wars. In the words of the Commander:
106 James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1922): 265. February 15, 2016, http://www.bartleby.com/196/pages/page265.html.
The Commander of commanders, possessor of all possessors, King of all Kings, Shah Yazdgerd, the son of Shah Yazdgerd who himself was one of the sons of Yazdgerd the First. This red rivulet you see here running flows from him who had royal blood in all his four hundred sixty six veins and was placed above all men by the hand of Ahura Mazda [the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism].108
Bound by the recognizable account of truth, the Commander, himself a member of aristocracy, does not want to give up his belief in the King’s cosmic power nor can he substitute his ideal image for a more realistic one even after being exposed to alternative narratives. When confronted with the Miller’s claim that the King cowardly had fled from the battlefield, the Commander, tries to explain and justify the monarch’s escape by arguing that “He [the King] was about to gather a great army and deliver the kingdom plain after plain from the countless hordes of the enemy.”109 The conventional “story” is simply too
compelling to ignore and grant legitimacy to alternative ones.
This hegemonic narrative is further confirmed by the rest of Yazdgerd’s men—the Magus (the clergy), the Captain (the military), and the Soldier (the younger generation driven by blind obedience and violence)— who do not hesitate to promote the monistic theory of truth. Holding firm to their beliefs in the existence of one historical truth, they never question the process of its establishment. It is a fact that a corpse is lying in the mill, but the reason behind his death as well as the truth of his identity are totally different according to each group’s mentality. The dilemma appears to be simple to Yazdgerd’s men: as preconceived by history, the King is killed by the Miller, who comes from a disadvantaged economic background and thereby conveniently fits the stereotype of poor as thieves. According to the Magus:
You [the Miller] are punished for your greed. The demon that raised its head in you was called avarice. Tell us if you gazed at the King’s shining breast plate or his knee-band or belly-band or leg-band? We know well that the subordinates
108 Bahram Beyzaie, Death of Yazdgerd: 9. 109 Ibid., 10.
long to rise above their superiors. The runner behind wants nothing better than to overtake the one running ahead of him. Or the loser, what does he want but winning? The walker hates the rider and the beggar thirsts for the king’s blood.110
An “accusation” against which the Miller and his family must defend themselves. The whole play, as a result, can be considered as a trial-like situation, where Yazdgerd’s men, accompanied by the audience, assume the roles of judges and jury members and listen to the Miller’s family presenting their narratives.
Yet, as it turns out, the search for truth proves to be rather complicated. In order to portray reality in all its complexity, Beyzaie breaks away from the realistic conventions in favor of a freer expression of human experience. His use of theatrical devices, such as masks, as well as his adoption of a bare stage with minimum props is crucial in drawing attention to the theatricality of the characters’ performance and of the whole piece. A bare
Figure 3-3: Susan Taslimi as the Miller’s wife.111
110 Ibid., 14.
stage affords a total concentration on the characters and encourages audience’s engagement convey the idea of unstable identities and provisional realities.
As soon as the play opens, Beyzaie introduces into this world conflicting forces that unsettle the otherwise eternal dichotomy of reality and fiction. As opposed to the first set of characters, the King’s idealized portrayal is constantly challenged by the Miller’s family, whose views do not conform to the established “facts” that ultimately shape “reality.” Undermining the legitimacy of the justice system, the Miller, in his opening lines, claims: No! revered master, lofty Commanders, clad in armor from top to toe! That which you administer now is not justice, but rank tyranny. This indeed is the place where his blood was shed—this uninvited guest—but I’m not to blame for it. He had already opted for death. No, my armor-clad master, what you do to us is not what we deserve.112
The repeated emphasis on judging and justice is significant in that it provides a counternarrative to the established reality. History, and those who represent it, attests to the King’s exercise of impartial justice, benevolence, and diligence. Yet, their version of reality is challenged by the Miller’s version which, in turn, instills doubt in the audience’s mind and weakens the former’s credence.
Aside from the Miller himself, the King’s righteous image is also deconstructed through the voices of those who had previously been excluded from historical narratives, namely women. Faced with the King’s men impetuous haste in executing “judgment,” for example, the Woman sarcastically retorts:
Yes, make haste lest we get away and our tongue shall reveal the disgraceful story of his flight and make people laugh at the valiant Shah! Yes, be quick!113
And later, she adds:
112 Ibid., 7. 113 Ibid., 8.
Look for the King’s slayer not here but out there. The King was slain already by the King. He who came here was a feeble little man.114
According to the Iranian mythology which reached its zenith under the Sassanian Empire, the king is bestowed with divine glory; he is not “one of the gods (yazadan), but, like the sun and moon, he [is] a divine creation of Ohrmazd [Ahura Mazda], essential for the proper functioning of the cosmos, and serve[s] an antidemonic role in creation.”115 But here, little
by little, the King’s divinity is forfeited by his subjects who expose the former’s human nature as well as his frailties. According to the Miller’s family, Yazdgerd’s conduct was anything but “kingly”: he contemplated suicide but was too much of a coward to end his life; shamefully fled from the battlefield to hide in the mill; and committed rape on the Miller’s daughter and seduced his wife. Therefore, as the story unfolds, the King’s glorious image is challenged by ambiguity and contradictions while his heroic myth is gradually debunked by the Miller’s family. His reality is reduced to the golden mask while his real self remains constantly veiled.
While the play’s polyphonic dramatic structure succeeds in inserting hitherto excluded voices into and shaping the official historical discourse, its parallel narrative structure conditions the search for truth to the realm of subjectivity. As a result, multiple